A successor communication system to W-CDMA and HSDPA, i.e., Long Term Evolution (LTE), is currently being discussed by 3GPP, a standardization group for W-CDMA. In LTE, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is to be used as a downlink radio access method and single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) is to be used as an uplink radio access method (see, for example, 3GPP TR 25.814, (V7.0.0), “Physical Layer Aspects for Evolved UTRA,” June 2006).
In OFDM, a frequency band is divided into multiple narrow frequency bands (subcarriers) and data are transmitted on the subcarriers. The subcarriers are densely arranged along the frequency axis such that they partly overlap each other but do not interfere with each other. This method enables high-speed transmission and improves frequency efficiency.
In SC-FDMA, a frequency band is divided into multiple frequency bands and the frequency bands are allocated to different terminals for transmission in order to reduce interference between the terminals. Also, SC-FDMA reduces variation of the transmission power and therefore makes it possible to reduce power consumption of terminals and to achieve wide coverage.
A reference signal for uplink in E-UTRA indicates a pilot channel that is used for purposes such as synchronization, channel estimation for coherent detection, and measurement of received SINR in transmission power control. The reference signal is a transmission signal known to the receiving end, i.e., the base station and is embedded at certain intervals in subframes.
SC-FDMA used as an uplink radio access method in E-UTRA is described below with reference to FIG. 1. In SC-FDMA, a system frequency band is divided into multiple resource blocks each including one or more subcarriers. Each user device (user equipment: UE) is allocated one or more resource blocks. In frequency scheduling, to improve the transmission efficiency or the throughput of the entire system, resource blocks are allocated preferentially to user devices with good channel conditions according to received signal quality or channel quality indicators (CQIs) measured and reported based on downlink pilot channels for the respective resource blocks by the user devices. Also for uplink radio access in E-UTRA, use of frequency hopping, where allocation of frequency blocks is varied according to a frequency hopping pattern, is being discussed.
In FIG. 1, time and frequency resources allocated to different user devices are represented by different hatchings. For example, a relatively wide frequency band is allocated to UE2 in the first subframe, but a relatively narrow frequency band is allocated to UE2 in the next subframe. Different frequency bands are allocated to the user devices without overlapping.
In SC-FDMA, different time and frequency resources are allocated to user devices in a cell for transmission to achieve orthogonality between the user devices in the cell. Here, the minimum unit of the time and frequency resources is called a resource unit (RU). In SC-FDMA, a consecutive frequency band is allocated to each user to achieve single-carrier transmission with a low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Allocation of the time and frequency resources in SC-FDMA is determined by a scheduler of a base station based on propagation conditions of user devices and the quality of service (QoS) of data to be transmitted. The QoS includes a data rate, a desired error rate, and a delay. Thus, in SC-FDMA, the system throughput is improved by allocating time and frequency resources providing good propagation conditions to respective user devices.
Base stations in a system independently determine allocation of time and frequency resources. Therefore, a frequency band allocated in a cell may overlap a frequency band allocated in a neighboring cell. If frequency bands allocated in neighboring cells partly overlap each other, signals interfere with each other and their quality is reduced.